How to use an Open Source License

Question

I'm a little unsure how the open source licensing stuff works. If I were to choose a particular open source license, what do you actually have to do to make it applicable to your software? I would imagine it would be a little more involved than just 'stating' that you're releasing your software under LGPL. And how does this 'contract' bind legally to your software?

Answer 1

It's as simple as deciding to license your software under a particular license. This is not technically contract law, but copyright law. As the owner/licenser of your intellectual property (the source and binaries) you may license its distribution anyway you see fit. Providing a clear disclaimer as to the recipients rights under the license is all that is necessary. Without a license, whether closed or open, no one has a right to distribute your copyrighted work. The purpose of all licenses is to grant some of your rights to other parties.

See here for more information. Or for perhaps too much information, check out O'Reilly's Understanding Open Source and Free Software Licensing.

~ William Riley-Land

Answer 2

For the GNU licenses, at least, you follow their instructions and you are then licensing your software (or documentation) under that license.

Answer 3

it depends on the type of open source license you are trying to use, all of them has very different meanings and things to take into consideration. even your design may be impact depending on the type of open source license you use.

Answer 4

No, that's pretty much it. From the GPLv3 text, add this to your program:

<one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of what it does.>
Copyright (C) <year>  <name of author>

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/&gt;.

The "contract" is this: without the GPL, no one but you has any right to distribute your program. They have no copying rights. The GPL says that if they abide by its terms, then you grant them the additional rights of distributing copies of your code.

There are other Free/Open Source Software licenses, but I'm just using this as an example.

Answer 5

In US the copyrights you have are "automatic" - i.e. noone can re-distribute your work without permission.

All these open-source licenses has one purpose only - to give this permission (under some conditions).

Actually, you just need to state, that you distribute your software under some license, and that's enough. It's up to the user to obey this license, otherwise hi/she is using your software without permission in violation of your copyright.

It's up to you to choose which one to use, or even write one of your own with these simple words "You can do whatever you want, without any guarantee from me."

Unless you define your requirements, no one will be able to help you choose a "ready-made" license which fits your needs.